ACN — American Card Number ACN — American Card Number

How ACN numbers work

Every ACN number has four parts, separated by periods:

PUBLISHER.YEAR.SET.CARD

Take ACN ATC.1909.T206.1005:

  • ATC is the publisher code, here the American Tobacco Company.
  • 1909 is the year the set was issued.
  • T206 is the set code. Sets issued before 1951 use their American Card Catalog code with the hyphen dropped, so T-206 becomes T206. Later sets use short tags such as BAS for a base set, TRADED for a traded set and UPDATE for an update set.
  • 1005 is the card's number in the set, padded with zeros to four digits. Where a card has a number printed on it, ACN uses it. Where it doesn't, as with many early tobacco cards, ACN assigns one.

Some numbers have a fifth part. The format allows an optional variation segment at the end. For now it is mostly unused, and variations are described in the card's record.

Different backs. A card with a different advertising back is a different card and gets its own ACN number. The T206 set is the classic case.

Numbers don't move. Once a card has an ACN number, it keeps it. If a correction is made, it is added as a note on the card's record and the number stays the same, so a citation you wrote today still works years from now.